They are "flying" in the polar seas: sea-butterflies are actually sea snails with a characteristic way of movement which looks like flapping wings. Limacina helicina is one of them, and scientists were worried about their future. The increased CO2 uptake into ocean waters leads to an acidification of the ocean water and diminishes the availability of carbonate ions which are important for making calcification of shells and skeletons. That means that if the periostracum (a sort of protection layer) is destroyed e.g. by failed predation attempts, the acid (carbonate undersaturated) water causes shell dissolution. But there are good news: Victoria L. Peck et al. (2018) showed that despite their original shell was partly dissolved, individuals of Limacina helicina were able to compensate that by thickening the inner shell wall. That does not mean, that acidification of the oceans is no problem! The thickening of the inner shell wall comes with a likely metabolic cost for the small sea-butterfly. It just means that these small animals have a higher tolerance as previously expected.
0 Kommentare
Hinterlasse eine Antwort. |
IdeaI love to increase my general science knowledge by reading papers from different fields of science. Here I share some of them. Archiv
März 2018
Kategorien
Alle
|